


The thin line between love and hate

by lemondrizzle



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, F/M, Post-Divorce, Post-Goolding Inquiry, Post-Relationship, Post-Series, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 05:24:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6643075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemondrizzle/pseuds/lemondrizzle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that there is a thin line between love and hate, and Nicola knows from experience this to be true. There are two men that are reserved in this category for her. The first being the idiot she made the mistake to marry and far too many years later divorced.  The second was the once all swearing eye of Downing Street. Malcolm Tucker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The thin line between love and hate

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Fan Fic. I'm not entirely sure where this came from. Just started a whole new The Thick of it obsession (hadn't watched it until recently) and suddenly I'm here, writing this, which seems to the opposite of what I wanted to write. I would like to continue this story, but it could be a stand-alone I guess. Please do leave your thoughts.

They say that there is a thin line between love and hate, and Nicola knows from experience this to be true. There are two men that are reserved in this category for her. The first being the fucking tosser she made the mistake to marry and far too many years later divorced. The second was the once all swearing eye of Downing Street. Malcolm Tucker. She remembered the first day she met him and could say that, without a shadow of a doubt that the hatred she now reserved for James was actually the hatred she had felt for Malcolm.

In all honesty Nicola still isn’t sure how it came to happen, but somehow she managed to fall in love with one of the best and the worst men she knew. She knew though, always knew - and this wasn’t just her anxiety talking – that whatever it was between them would crash and burn, and that everyone surrounding them would end up getting burned in the fiery abyss alongside them. She just hadn’t realised how quickly and how spectacular it would be when it did happen.

Nicola had never stopped loving Malcolm even after all these years, but she wasn’t too sure - if tested - whether she had ever stopped hating him either.. Even so, the ache for him hadn’t ever disappeared, it just lessened over time and it got to the point where it was normal to feel like that.

She tries not to think about him or those years back then. But sometimes something is said, or she sees something, and it’s just enough to bring back all those memories in their painful glory and she realises she can’t ignore that little ache anymore. So she allows herself the luxury of unlocking the box she’s tucked away in her mind, and allowing it to flow out and swamp her. Normally it’s when the house is silent, the kids having gone to bed or at their grandparents and there’s a bottle of red looking to be drunk.  
But it always ends the same way, it leaves her with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and an icy grip rising up in her chest leaving its grip on her heart. It leaves her feeling like nothing more than when she first started at DoSAC, only worse. Soon enough she finds herself running to the bathroom, to the medicine cabinet and delving between the Calpol and Listerine, right at the back of the cabinet to find the “Rescue Remedy” – a souvenir of another life.

Once, Katie – who’d come back from her summer holidays from Uni – had found her like this. Pacing back and forth between the bath and the sink, desperately trying to catch her breath, as she squirted the stuff into her mouth like it was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship. She’d sat Nicola on the edge of the bath, helping to assist her in breathing normally again, taken the stuff that was “probably laced with LSD and cows testicles” away from her and placed it onto the ledge. Once calm, she’d kneeled down and made Nicola look her in the eyes and told her that “running away will never solve your issues Mum, find the Scottish Lord of Doom and just fucking talk to him.” Nicola just smiled sadly at her and shook her head telling her that sometimes things are insurmountable and that way too much water had gone under the bridge. She’ll always remember the look on Katie’s face though. It’s a look that her mother reserved for her solely for when she had disappointed her. Katie got up, and coldly exclaimed “Nothing is insurmountable, if you want it enough. I thought you were better than this Mum, stop making fucking excuses” before stalking out, leaving Nicola shivering with too many thoughts.  
For weeks after the bathroom incident, whenever she’s in the same room as Katie, Nicola feels the judgement coming off Katie in waves but never mentions it. She doesn’t really want to acknowledge how Katie knows it’s about the “Scottish Lord of Doom,” or the conversation that will come after it. She knows her eldest is clever though. On bad days she would say deceptively so – something she’d say Katie inherited from James. On good she acknowledges that Katie had had to grow up fast. She’d become the mother hen to her siblings. She’d watched her parents’ marriage implode and the subsequent fall out. 

There will come a time though when Nicola realises that Katie is right; that she cannot keep trying to run away from this thing that threatens to devour her; that nothing is ever insurmountable and that sometimes it’s all about good timing...


End file.
